Antonio spoke recently on his early career and the challenges he faced.

He said “I was playing for the juniors. I had to trial for the youth team at Tooting & Mitcham,

“The youth team manager didn’t even want to look at the junior team, so I had to go trial for them. Managed to get in.

“Got into the reserve team my first year. The reserve team manager was telling the first team manager about me. He was like ‘nah, he’s a kid. He’s not going to be strong, fast, or not even good enough.”

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He continued “So I had to trial for the first team. Got into the first team. Started playing, but then they wanted me to sign a contract. I didn’t want to sign a contract, so they’ve kicked me out of the team.”

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He said “Then I went to AFC Wimbledon. They didn’t want to pay for my registration fee. £7, I went to QPR on a six week trial. I passed every fitness test, I did everything I needed to do. Then I’ve gone into this reserve game, where [I was told] ‘This is important, if you do well here, then you’ll sign.’ I scored one and set one up. They’ve come back to me and gone ‘You ain’t done enough crosses.'”

“Within three months of that I signed for Reading. I went back to Mitcham, signed my contract, played games, and then Reading came.”

After playing for multiple teams including Sheffield Wednesday and Nottingham Forest Antonio joined West Ham in 2015 for a fee of £7million, exactly a million times what Wimbledon thought he was worth.

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